Bill Maher recently played the role of a broken clock and stumbled upon a truth.  He noted that America is potentially heading toward a civil war due to rising anger on both sides of the political aisle.

This is a true sentiment, although he misdiagnoses the cause and effect.  Runaway hate, growing violence, and anti-American extremism on the Left have triggered a rise in righteous anger on the right.

Should President Donald Trump win re-election in 2020, everyone paying attention believes that this will serve as a triggering event that will result in a serious spasm of violence.

Maher immediately followed up his call for ramping back the incendiary language that now defines the political discourse by calling Republicans the equivalent of hate-filled anti-intellectuals.  His idea of offering understanding of Republicans is to say that they are even more hateful than stupid, people to perhaps be pitied instead of despised. 

"I'm going to try to stop because I have learned that the anti-intellectualism on the right doesn't come primarily through stupidity," said Maher.  "It comes from hate."  He concluded by throwing around the usual leftist language of pretending that somehow President Trump is uniquely tyrannical.

A hate-filled moron is always going to be a hate-filled moron.  Maher just proves that point in his world-class exercise in projection. 

Leftists are motivated almost exclusively by hate.  It is almost always liberals who sever family relations over politics.  It is leftists who hate their country and despise its flag.  Almost all political violence is emanating from the Left.  Considering the slanderous demonization of all Republicans as racist, misogynist, imperialist, homophobic supremacists, this is not terribly surprising.  Hate springs quite naturally from liberals' noxious, racist, and anti-Christian worldview.

Projectionist Maher and his ilk naturally believe that hate is a conservative phenomenon.

But the anti-intellectual charge is even more laughable, even if it is a statement of faith on the Left.  Maher didn't think he was saying anything particularly controversial.  But he has it backwards.

Conservatives are not hostile to intellect or education.  They are hostile to what these terms have come to represent on the Left.  Conservatives don't believe that liberals actually display any real intellect, wisdom, or logic.  For their part, liberals spend most of their time proving them right. 

Liberals believe that academic credentials, achieved through leftist institutions, determine intellect.  But, as universities have transformed from places that instill knowledge into leftist propaganda factories, those diplomas speak more to a person having the "right" ideological thoughts to actually knowing anything meaningful. 

Like the class of elementary school students in Billy Madison, far too many university students are dumber for having listened to indoctrinators disconnected from rational thought.  It's quite the scam for parents across the country.  Scrimp and save to send your kids to the "best" colleges only to have them returned as brainwashed and hostile leftists.

Intellectualism no longer bears any connection to actually displaying intelligence.  This is seen in the illogical positions regularly adopted by the Left.  Consider just a few:

Even though a child is fully viable at 24 weeks in the womb and is clearly alive long before that, every viable Democrat candidate thinks it is logical to believe that our most helpless Americans can be brutally killed at 40 weeks of age, or even beyond in the case of the pro-infanticide crowd.  Their position, besides being depraved and immoral, is fully anti-science.

Every attempt to instill a Marxist government in history has resulted in tyranny and despair.  But an increasing percentage of Democrats believe that they will be the ones to finally get it right.  These paragons of tolerance admire history's worst despots and tyrants.  Their position is decidedly anti-history and anti-human.

One of the leftists' marquee candidates, Elizabeth Warren, is proposing new spending to the tune of over $125 trillion over the course of a decade and claims she can achieve this society-destroying result without raising taxes on the middle class.  All of the candidates believe that it is wise public policy to have open borders and offer rich and expensive social services to anyone who walks across that border.  Their positions are anti-math, which is a rampant problem for nearly all Democrats.  They no longer even pretend to square the numbers on any of their policy pronouncements.

Liberals believe that it is perfectly natural for a man who is an average athlete to wake up one morning, decide he is a woman, take a few drugs, and dominate a woman's sport.  This position is anti-science, anti-woman, and anti-sane. 

Liberals believe that the biggest future threat to America is global warming and that a poverty-ensuring $90-trillion Green New Deal that posits the elimination of methane-producing cows is part of the answer.  A couple decades back, someone who would have suggested this even in jest would have been deposited in a nice cushioned room for his own protection.

Liberals are anti-intellectual across the board.  They no longer believe in studying any of the great works of literature to learn about humanity, culture, and enduring values.  Why read William Shakespeare, John Milton, or Homer, all castigated as dead white guys, when you can catch the latest Michael Moore flick or read some no-name new author with the latest derivative tale about the evils of colonialism?  Why study the wisdom of America's founders in establishing a constitutional republic when you can listen to Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez expound on the beauty of socialism?

Why study rational economics when you can tune in to the diatribes of a Keynesian fool like Paul Krugman, who never saw a government spending program he didn't love?  For that matter, why study anything meaningful when there are such great course offerings available today as "The Sociology of Miley Cyrus: Race, Class, Gender, and Media" at Skidmore College or "Goldberg's Canon: Making Whoopi" at Bates College?

Liberals are the living incarnation of the old Sam Cooke classic.  Don't know much about history (or math, literature, or science).  But we know plenty about Whoopi and Miley.  And what a wonderful world it will be if you just put us in charge forever.

If Bill Maher were a bit more aware, he would realize we do indeed have a real challenge with intelligence, logic, and reason.  But it is a left-wing phenomenon, and it is intentional.  Leftists have perverted education and the concept of citizenship in the interest of establishing their permanent political power.  The last thing they want is a well educated, informed, and moral citizenry, and we are reaping the results of that. 

My hope is that we can continue to work out political differences through the political process.  But should we end up with the civil war that Bill Maher fears, he will have been one of the contributors.  He shows no understanding of what has caused the current state of affairs in America.  If we do indeed travel this dark and terrible path, it will be because of the destruction of intelligence, wisdom, and logic by the Left, to be replaced by envy, greed, and tribalism.

Fletch Daniels can be found on Twitter at @fletchdaniels.